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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Readers of Haxton's recent The Lay of Eleanor and Irene, a racy mock-philosophical tour de force about modern love and mores, should be delighted if unsurprised to learn that what Haxton can do with the epic form, he can do equally well with the lyric. His poetry is formal enough to establish his authority, but it breathes and talks and is appropriately leavened with a sense of humor. Whether Haxton is writing out of his own life or from a bird's-eye view of the world, his voice rings true and clear. Though many of the poems are set in the writer's native Mississippi, where, for example, he encounters a snake in the henhouse or later is asked by a neighbor to shoot an injured colt, it is fair to say that the book's real subject can be suggested by the titles of two other poems: ``Justice'' and ``Economics.'' Haxton is a star poet. (April)

Library Journal - Library Journal

Celebration of place and delight in storytelling distinguish this second book by the author of The Lay of Eleanor and Irene . Place is typically the rural South, a world of childhood toughs, the KKK, copperheads and nutrias, jackmules and frizzly henscreatures struggling for dominance. The mock-heroic long opening poem introduces this strange yet familiar world and sets a standard not always met by the rest of the work. Haxton's most sucessful when he has room to tell a story; to layer myth, local history, event, and imagination; to cull from memory the ``hot world cold in an impenetrable darkness.'' Recommended for contemporary collections. Robert Hudzik, P.L. of Cincinnati & Hamilton Cty.